Announcing Tride
The Ultimate App for Cycling, Running, and Multi-sport Training
Every seasoned runner or cyclist knows how fulfilling and pleasant a long run or a hill-climb feels. This feeling is something that beginners do not experience right-away. Usually, the first couple of runs and bike rides feel awful and demotivating. To achieve endurance sports Zen, one needs a structured training plan from the very beginning and a tool that helps to stick to it. An instrument that enables you to develop your fitness at the right pace and unlocks the joy of getting fitter, faster, and happier. Tride is that instrument.
Tride is a Swiss Army knife app for cyclists, runners and multi-sport athletes of any level from absolute beginners to those who race competitively.
You can use Tride to record your rides and runs. Plan, create, and perform structured workouts. Review and analyze your past workouts. Make decisions based on your recent data, and ultimately become faster, stronger, and fitter.
Tride supports both, indoor and outdoor, activities as well as numerous sport-technology sensors ranging from heart rate monitors and power-meters to stationary cycling trainers and advanced fitness machines.
Not in a mood of structured workout? You can load a scenic cycling route and follow it while knowing where all the group-ride rest stops and cafés are.
Almost everything is shareable, editable, easy to understand, and even hackable if you feel so inclined.
Tride has many more exciting features I’m not yet ready to announce. If you are curious or want to help out with testing, join the beta.
There are a couple more things I want to commit to from the very beginning, so I want to mention them in this early entry.
Privacy and Your Data
Everything in Tride is designed to be opt-in. There is no social user account or social component in the app. It’s you, your training plan, and your data. If you need support from the community, there will be a free, opt-in, discussion forum which will launch together with early beta and will be accessible via the web.
If you chose to, you could share completed workouts with community, coach, and friends. In Tride, sharing your training data is not as trivial as simple file sharing via AirDrop or uploading to online service. You are in control of what information and what types of data to share. I’ll write more details on sharing in future entries — I’m pretty excited about this feature in Tride.
Few words in data storage: Everything is stored on your device or your iCloud Drive (if you have it enabled.) I, as a developer and maker of the app, have no access to your data in any shape or form. You own your data, no strings attached.
Guiding Star
Let me describe a bigger picture. My ultimate goal is to make the best endurance sports training tool. I acknowledge that this is a very ambitious goal, and it will not happen overnight for obvious reasons. It’ll take time, a lot of work, and many releases, but that’s my guiding star. I enjoy that work and want to help people get healthier.
Cycling, running, and methodic training changed my life to an unrecognizable degree. I’ve never been healthier or happier in my life than I’m now. As someone who was overweight (and still improving) for most of my life and inept of any sport, helping people improve their physical and mental health, is something very close and dear to my heart.
And if all of the above enables me to be successful, I’d be the happiest person on this planet.
Where? Tride and Platforms.
The initial release of Tride will happen only on iOS. Apple Watch app will follow soon. It was the release of an original Apple Watch (and few frustrations with the current state of sports technology) that planted the seed of making Tride. Support for other Apple platforms are planned, but things might change. My primary priority is to release version 1.0 successfully.
Finally, after having an app in my head since 2014 and something I’ve been moonlighting on since mid-2015, I have a name for it — Tride. Now, I can stop vaguely mentioning it with ever-changing codenames. This entry is an official announcement of the Tride app and this journal. Here, I’ll write about the design, development, and challenges of running an indie fitness app.
— Toto
You can join the Tride Beta here or follow my Tride story on Twitter: @trideapp.
